Lost World (2026)by Patrick Wyman

 Audiobook Review

Lost World (2026)

by Patrick Wyman

  I love the subject of "pre-history" or the history of pre or semi-literate peoples.  The frontiers of linguistic history have been joined with incredible advances in DNA science and LIDAR ground-scanning technology to produce a new knowledge about complex cultures in pre-history outside of those who developed writing.  Wyman has a podcast, but he is well versed on his linguistics.  I'm not as sure of his grasp of the underlying science of dna and human genetics- a historical pitfall for linguistics trying to stretch historical identity back into non-historical times.  But there is no denying that DNA is a big improvement over 20th century nonsense about "blood" and "race," neither of which exist as they relate to identifying human cohorts.

  Wyman does an excellent job traversing the recent work in these various fields and harnessing them to a narrative that roughly tracks the theoretical outline of scholar James C. Scott and his successors like David Graeber, i.e. not taking for granted that the concept that we know as "civilization" through Ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Mediterranean somehow represents the ONLY way for humans to organize complex society.  As recently as a decade ago this was mostly speculation, but the confluence of DNA science and LIDAR archeology has really pushed back the frontiers of knowledge in non-western places like Bronze age Ireland, the Amazon, the Andes, China, etc.  Even if we don't know what DNA specifically represents, we can use it to track the kinship of people we find in archeological settings.  

  Lost World is at its least interesting when it gets into the familiar proto-indo-european game- although it's clear that genetic evidence has borne out the truth of the traditional thesis of horse writing redheads who came and conquered Europe, especially in the north and west.  More interesting to me was the less familiar material- firming up the Anatolian Farmers vs. the European Hunter-Gatherer groups and showing how they persist in modern DNA despite the loss of their culture.    His description of the expansion of the Malay-Austronesian language group from a small patch of land in present day Taiwan to a present geographic territory encompassing everywhere from Malaysia to Hawaii is a welcome counterpart to the western intensive PIE hypothesis. 

  I also thought the archeological evidence was interesting- here he mostly discusses recent discoveries in modern day Turkey and Ireland, making the case that pre-bronze age Earthworks (think Stonehenge) were not a product of elites and enslaved a la the Egyptian pyramids but rather a more cooperative, voluntary endeavor. 

The Warmth of Other Suns (2010) by Isabel Wilkerson

 100 Best Books of the 21st Century: The New York Times

The Warmth of Other Suns (2010)

by Isabel Wilkerson

#2

   The Warmth of Other Suns is my 66th read from the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century list from the New York Times.  Most of those reads proceded the publication of the list, but I found there were a good dozen non-fiction titles on the list that seemed like books I really *should* read.  At Number Two, Isabel Wilkerson's monster work of history on the African American migration is the last major title on the list that I handed tackled.  I ended up reading it on my Kindle because it is 622 pages long and I didn't fancy it as an Audiobook or a hard copy.  Mostly I read it on my most recent vacation on the East Coast.  The subject matter blended nicely with the recent chapter of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America- each of the individuals Wilkerson focuses in on could be characters from a novel from Mississippi, Alabama or Louisiana. 

  These are the people that left, a viewpoint largely missing from the map-based approach of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America, which essentially guarantees a roster of losers from nowhere who do nothing- I mean almost by definition.   Wilkerson clears up many questions I had about why EVERYONE didn't leave.  Turns out, the local authorities and employers made it difficult on top of the fact that many black southerners lacked the resources to do anything besides simply existing. 

  What I've seen in the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America is that most people just want to be left alone to try the best they can.  For example, I haven't read a single novel involving poor people in rural America waiting for any government to do anything for them in any way, shape or form.  Mostly what I've read is about scenario's where the local power structures actively interfere with the ability of certain groups to simply exist without being actively oppressed in ways subtle and less subtle. 

  I'm not just talking about the rural south- the poor of New England have a thing or two to say about being forced into particular modes of life.  Wilkerson follows he subject through their entire lives, and it becomes clear that no one but no one "gets over" the experience of the systemic racism as practiced in the deep south in the early 20th century.  Even if you cut off the actual period of slavery- which for the characters in this book represented their GRANDPARENTS, the Jim Crow period was in many ways crueler because it held out at least the hope of a semblance of the ability of black Americans to go about their business, but the reality was anything but that. 

The Great Transformation (1944) by Karl Polyani

Audiobook Review

The Great Transformation (1944)

 by Karl Polyani

   I keep coming across references to Hungarian economist/social theorist Karl Polyani.  He was front and present in Capitalism by Sven Beckert, and I'd argue that Polyani is a huge influence on Beckert- I'm sure Beckert would agree so maybe not an opinion I'd have to argue.  Polyani also got his own chapter in Capitalism and Its Critics by John Cassidy.  I think it was while I was listening to Capitalism and Its Critics that I discovered that someone made an Audiobook edition of Polyani's opus, The Great Transformation.  Clocking in at 14 hours, it was the attention commitment equivalent of a novel, and Polyani is light on the hard economics.  The Great Transformation read almost like a magazine article at times, presumably this was his attempt to communicate his ideas to a larger audience.  The timing though- yeesh- 1944- probably couldn't pick a worse time to publish a work of popular economics, what with the war on and all.

   I'm sure it also didn't help his popularity that he had foreign origins and a critique that took direct aim at the concept of "lassez faire" economics popularized by the Austrian school (Von Mises, Friedman and his disciples). Polyani was unique in that he was a contemporary of Von Mises going back to his student days, and so was well prepared when American intellectuals began promulgating his ideas.  Thirty years into a broad consensus about the basic mechanics of managing economic growth (spend your way out of a recession or demand crises, generally try not to let administrators throttle economic growth) it can be easy to forget how controversial some of these positions were a half century back.

  The main thesis in this book is that capitalism created a "market society" that, far from requiring a "hands-off" approach from the state, is unfathomable WITHOUT the state intervening in a myriad of ways.  His major illustration of this process was what happened with the Speenhamland system .  This was an amplification of the Elizabethan poor laws from the 18th century.  Basically, locals where required to offer everyone in their area a place to stay, food and a job.  The growing middle class and budding capitalist class destroyed this system so that poor people would be forced to work for wages.

  In an era where AI technologists have suggested that a "universal basic income" might be the solution to compensating people for AI created job loss, the comparison is as relevant now as it was in the mid 20th century (maybe more so?)   Polyani's point with the Speenhamland system is both that it was government created and government destroyed.  A free market in labor was not something which "existed in nature" and needed to be "protected from the leviathan," rather it was something that needed to be created by affirmative action at the behest of motivated, enfranchised interest groups.   Hard to argue the point in 2026.

Indonesian Banda (1978) by Willard Hanna

 Book Review

Indonesian Banda: 

Colonialism and Its Aftermath in the Nutmeg Islands (1978)

by Willard Hanna

   Recent books I've read on the history of Capitalism and the relationship of Capitalism to slavery have pointed out that the genocidal elimination of an entire population of a specific territory was not, as they computer nerds of today say, "a bug, but a feature" of early capitalism.  Specifically, the idea that if one encountered a geographically distinct territory, an island, for example, that was otherwise amenable to factory/plantation agriculture BUT such exploitation was presently prevented by the presence of an existing population that did not want to become slaves to foreigners, one could simply remove the population, one way or another.  

  I was familiar with this dynamic in the New World milieu, but it wasn't until recently that I'd heard about the adventures of the Dutch in this same area, not in the new world, but in the Indonesian archipelago, namely, the island of Banda, where an enterprising Dutch merchant-warlord utterly extirpated an indigenous population so he could bring in slaves to grow the nutmeg he wanted.   This went on from about 1609 to 1621, when Jan Pieterszoon Coen led a mixed army of Dutch soldiers, local recruits and Japanese mercenaries to take the island once and for all.  Coen remained a culture hero in the Netherlands until relatively recently, when the scholarship caught up with him.  Note at how early this sequence of events took place, around the same time the North American British colony at Jamestown was founded. 

Capitalism (2025) by Sven Beckert

 Book Review

Capitalism: A Global History (2025)

by Sven Beckert

  I don't care about money all that much, but I'm obsessed with Capitalism, particularly the history of capitalism.  I'm also a fan of historian Sven Beckert- I really liked his Empire of Cotton, which I read back in 2019.  I also enjoyed his anthology Slavery's Capitalism, which I read in anticipation of the release of this book.   As much as I'm interested in any single subject in world history it is the history of capitalism.  Beckert's effort is laudable and about as good as any book for a general readership which takes in this entire subject in one volume is going to get.

 Much of what Beckert seeks to establish is the global part- recognizing that capitalism is NOT just something that happened during the industrial revolution in northwest Europe.  Beckert identifies an idea of the pre-modern capitalism of "nodes" or islands, of merchant driven capitalism that extend back to the dawn of civilization, in places like Oman, India and Venice.  These were physically small places where capitalism was defined by long-distance trade, and its exponents were merchants. 

 He then moves to what is probably the most important, and least well understood chapter, the era of "War Capitalism" which lay-people know as the colonial period, where western polities (and later, Japan) expanded into the New World and Africa and established a commodity-production model of capitalism that relied heavily on clearing land of indigenous peoples and replacing them with huge, single product plantations powered by slave labor.  Historically, defenders of capitalism sought to distance it from this epoch, but Becker relies on a half-century of scholarship which places War Capitalism and slavery at the center of the world-capitalist experience. 

 The War Capitalist chapter is really the high-point, with Beckert synthesizing a lot of scholarship that may be unfamiliar to a casual reader.  After that, everything gets pretty predictable:  The initial industrial revolution, the second aka "Fordist" industrial revolution, the rise of consumer capitalism, etc.  There wasn't much after the war capitalism chapters that really held my attention but it is hard not to appreciate Beckert's ability to make a dry subject (economic history) come to life for something resembling a general audience.

Summer of Fire and Blood (2025) by Lyndal Roper

 Audiobook Review

Summer of Fire and Blood (2025)

by Lyndal Roper

    Billed as "the first history of the German Peasant's War in a generation," Summe of Fire and Blood delivers on the promise, bringing the English language historiography of this poorly understood episode in early modern German history into the present.  It was also a great Audiobook snag- the kind of book I'm really looking for in the Libby app.  The problem with being interested in a subject like "Early Modern German history" is primarily that most of it is written in German.  What is written in English is always going to be heavily weighted towards the academic//specialist market.   I thought going in that this was a German language translation, but no, it is apparently true that the first history of the German Peasant's War in a generation was written English.

   The use of the 'German Peasants War' (instead of German Peasants Revolt, which is what I grew up with) should tell you about the perspective of the author- it's very James Scott/David Graeber, looking at things from the bottom up and trying to tell the story of people who weren't well educated and didn't write everything down.   Roper goes hard on the origins, motives and the heady days when various bands of roving peasants were able to sack unguarded Monasteries and bully townsfolk into submission.  They were benefited from the generally chaotic political situation in German speaking areas- polities were split between conventional nobility, church-run states and independent towns. 

  The ruling authorities didn't seem to be particularly aware that such a thing as a peasant revolt on a large-scale was even possible.   Of course, gradually the nobility got their act together and when it finally came to peasant armies vs. the military of the early modern era, the peasants got crushed.  The payback was brutal- which Roper covers but doesn't really dwell upon.   Surely there is a Foucauldian take that would emphasis the payback portion over the war itself.

Capitalism and Its Critics (2025) by John Cassidy

Audiobook Review

 Capitalism and Its Critics: A History:

 From the Industrial Revolution to AI (2025)

by John Cassidy

    I read about Capitalism and Its Critics in the New York Times, where Jennifer Szalai wrote an excellent review.  Cassidy is best known as a writer on economic topics for the New Yorker.  Both the review and Cassidy's pedigree gave me the idea that this would make a great Audiobook and sure enough, nine months later, I was able to check out a copy of the Audiobook from the Los Angeles Public Library.

  And reader, I was rewarded.  Capitalism and Its Critics is as accesible as it is interesting, and while Cassidy treads no new territory, he does an excellent job of summarizing centuries of economic thought while sparing the reader/listener from reading any of these often-obtuse authors.  More then once while listening to Capitalism and Its Critics I was struck by the thought that it is the eternal fate of the most famous economists to see their work mis-understood and applied by people who haven't read their work.  I'd wager most readers would associate criticism of capitalism with the "Left" as defined by a line of thinkers following in the footsteps of Karl Marx, but Cassidy reveals just as many critics from the "Right." The major difference is that most of the critics from the left, at least up until the time of Keynes, were persecuted, whereas critics from the right tended to end up in power or see their acolytes in power.

  Two themes that Cassidy hammers home are:

1)  Capitalism lives in a perpetual state of crisis.

2)  The idea of a Capitalism existing outside of a State made legal framework is ridiculous.

   Thus, his major criticism of critics from the right is that they live in a fantasy of the free market that is nothing short of fantastic, while at the same time allowing Dictators and Authoritarian strongmen into their tent under the guise of limiting state action in the economy (see Chile).  Meanwhile, he accurately points out that critics from the left have simply been wrong in that they start from a premise that the contradictions inherent in capitalist activity will inevitably lead to the collapse of capitalism.

   He also breathes life into figures I would have considered minor players before reading this book- Karl Polanyi and Joan Robinson to name two and he also develops time periods that don't get much attention in the west- specifically the period of Russian economic thought between the Russian Revolution and the ascension of Stalin.   Even if, like me, you are largely familiar with the history of capitalism without being a specialist or expert, you will find the writing engaging.

    

Medicine River (2025) by Mary Annete Pember

 Audiobook Review

Medicine River:  A Story of Survival and the Legacy of Indian Boarding Schools (2025)

by Mary Annete Pember

    I listened to this Audiobook because I am interested in the subject of Indian Boarding Schools.  Basically, for decades American authorities took Native American children away from their families and put them in boarding schools where they were taught to deny their heritage, speak English and frequently were subject to abuse and ill-health.  After returning home they frequently suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and a perpetual feeling of estrangement from their community.

   Pember blends some of this history with her personal experience as the daughter of a woman who went to an Indian Boarding School.  Spoiler alert, there is a lot of family trauma in this book.

  

Murderland (2025) by Caroline Fraser

 Audiobook Review

Murderland (2025)

by Caroline Fraser

  Murderland has an interesting and persuasive thesis: That the spike in serial killing in the 60's and 70's was directly related to industrial activity poisoning children with lead and other toxic substances.  Fraser combines this narrative with capsule biographies of famous American serial killers- Ted Bundy gets most of the ink in Murderland. Fraser also intertwines her own memories of a girlhood in the Tacoma era- the epicenter for factory pollution and serial killers.  The business part of the story is familiar- Mid 20th century capitalism pursues profit at the expense of the environment.  I presume those who are interested in serial killers will know much of that stuff to- I'm not, and I don't know much about Bundy, so I found that bit interesting- Bundy was an audacious killer- he kind of embodies every stereotype that parents fear and his targets were anything but women on the margin of society.   Fraser's memoir material didn't do much for me. 

Slavery's Capitalism (2016) edited by Sven Beckert

 Audiobook Review

Slavery's Capitalism (2016)

edited by Sven Beckert

   One of the interesting by-products of the state-by-state, geographical approach of the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America, is that it really awakens an interest in the underlying history itself.  Since I've been reading about the south now for almost a year, naturally I've become interested in the history of the region, and specifically the economics of slavery.  The economics of slavery were a central to concern to both pro and anti-slavery forces until the matter was settled during the Civil War, and then after that both sides continued to make use of their propaganda-type arguments, which further obscured rational discussion and investigation of these issues.

  Both sides played their part.  Obviously, proponents of the Southern side do not want to dwell on the real economics of slavery- the whole idea is to drape the past with a gauze that softens the edges.  However, the North also did it's part, in that generations of Northern scholars have ignored or hidden the dramatic links between slavery in the American south and Northern capitalism.   I can attest to that based on my own trips to the Northeast, where I've visited a variety of history museums and read a handful of economic history books looking for scholars who make what seem like obvious connections. 

  Mostly what this book does is say these obvious things in print.  The format is uneven- it reads like a graduate level seminar where each participant submitted one chapter- many of the individual essays read almost like school projects, so mostly the value here is seeing the broad themes outlined in economic terms.  Specifically, you've got the economic ties between the slave holding south and northern (and European capitalism), they dynamic inside the south, namely the shift that occurred when the FOREIGN slave trade was abolished in 1808.  This book reveals the black line marking one era from the next.  Most Americans- and I'm talking the educated ones here, not the idiots, think only of this first part- the slavery of transatlantic importation of slaves.  Crucially though it is the second part- where slaves moved out of the older societies of Maryland and Virginia southward, culminating in the Cotton Boom of the early 19th century in present day Alabama and Mississippi.

 This is the distinctly American slavery this is more important to most African Americans, novelists and scholars. Both of modes of slavery where insanely cruel, but it was the trade within the United States that has really been highlighted for me both by this book and by the books in the 1,001 Novels: A Library of America project.

Little Bosses Everywhere (2025) by Bridget Read

 Audiobook Review

Little Bosses Everywhere: 

How the Pyramid Scheme Shaped America (2025)

by Bridget Read

  I try to keep at least one non-fiction Audiobook in my Libby mix at all times.  Little Bosses Everywhere: How the Pyramid Scheme Shaped America, has been on and off my metaphorical libby loan shelf a half dozen times over the past year, and I finally knocked it off during the break.  I've had an interest in pyramid schemes and multi-level marketing since I started work in the world of federal criminal defense as an attorney.  One of my first tasks was reviewing physical documents at the Boiler Room Taskforce in Mission Valley, San Diego, CA.  This was for a telemarketing scam, but the documents I reviewed contained "training materials" that led me to explore this nefarious world.

 Multi-Level Marketing, as Read details exhaustively, is here to stay, and the second and third generations of some of the founding families of MLM are familiar to anyone who knows Cabinet level appointments in the Trump administrations, one and two.  The roots of multi-level marketing are in the idea of the pyramid scheme, which is an actual event that happened in the US, and not just a generic term to describe a type of scheme to defraud.  The history, in fact, goes quite deep, and spans the country, and, in fact, the entire world at this point.

  I knew many of the details, and found the personal stories of the victims (Read doesn't talk to many winners, if any) pretty tedious, but Read, despite her stated thesis that all multi-level marketing is scam, does point to the reason that MLM's endure despite their scam status- which is that people drop out, in fact, everyone who isn't a "winner" under the system drops out, and the winners maintain their status because they can source new people to recruit.  That is 100% the key to success in any MLM, finding new leads and converting them.

  There was an interesting chapter near the end where Read discusses the newest iteration of this world, the growth of "life coaches" or "mentors" as entrees to the MLM business.  Certainly, this seems like something that would be facilitated greatly by all Social Meida platforms, and it strikes me that is more or less a valid way for such people to make money.

The Far Edges of the Known World (2025) by Owen Rees

 Book Review

The Far Edges of the Known World:

 Life Beyond the Borders of Ancient Civilization (2025)

by Owen Rees

   If there were more books in this category: general reader level history books about ancient history, I would for sure read them, but the fact is that the underlying research doesn't require more than one new book a decade in most subfields.   Reading everything there is available to a non-specialist about events on the fringes of so-called western "civilization" in English, in the United States, is not hard.  Rees summarizes recent research in areas on the margins of the ancient greco-roman world.   He also includes a section on Europe, and some of the most interesting material is written about modern day Ethiopia. Like all books published in American on this area of interest, the lack of foreign language knowledge condemns the author to reinforce the very historical near-sightedness he seeks to correct.  To take the example of ancient Ethiopia, he doesn't appear to have read anything in Ge'ez.

  Anyway, it is interesting to be sure but nothing mind blowing here, like, I kinda knew what was coming.

Rot(2025) by Padraig X.Scanlan

 Audiobook Review

Rot (2025)

by Padraig X. Scanlan

   The reviews this week are running in January, but they actually represent the end of 2024.  I spent the entire year listening to this Audiobook with months in between (the library only had one Audiobook copy for the entire system).  I checked it out after last year's visit to Ireland, where I noted locals referring to the "Irish Potato Genocide" rather than the "Irish Potato Famine" as we were all taught in school.   I thought it would be interesting to review the scholarship in this area, and Rot does a good job of summarizing recent scholarship for a general reading audience.  

  I thought I had a good idea of where Scanlan would be headed based on similar arguments I've read in the area of Native American history and the history of the Southern United States.  Like many of the arguments that surround the post-erradication campaign attempts of the United States Government to "Kill the Indian and Save the Man," many of the Governmental policies described here as genocidal (he doesn't actually use that phrase) were extremely poorly thought out attempts to "help" the Irish.  Specifically, to help them become good capitalist members of the British Empire, by eradicating the potato, which the rural Irish used as a hedge against the vagaries of the market economy.

   As Scanlan well demonstrates, the Irish were anything BUT outliers from contemporary market economics, rather they were only two well acquainted with the most rapacious aspects of modern market capitalism courtesy of the complicated system of land rights, which had all the unpredictably of modern stock trading in terms of its impact on the rural proletariat.  The Irish peasantry was also roundly betrayed by their elites, who were all either actual British colonialists or the product of families who were long-time collaborators.  

How the Word is Passed (2022) by Clint Smith

 Audiobook Review

How the Word is Passed (2022)

by Clint Smith

  I highly recommend the Monuments exhibit at MOCA-Geffen in Los Angeles- one of the best museums exhibits I've seen in the past decade.   This exhibit features several "decommissioned" Confederate War memorials (mostly from Baltimore) with companion pieces by contemporary artists.  While we were there, my partner mentioned this book, which I strangely was only barely aware of, despite immersing myself in the literature of the deep south for the past six months.  Smith's method is that of an essayist, each chapter takes him to a different location in the South where he takes a tour, talks to the people who work there and other tourists, and contrasts the opinions of those people with his own and gives it the perspective of his own research as a scholar of the period.

   Every chapter is interesting for different reasons.  Smith is an excellent writer and the entire experience reminded me of a Southern-US focused Teju Cole.  After seeing the exhibit and listening to the book, it's impossible to not see the connection between the two.  In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if  How the Word is Passed didn't directly inspire Monuments.  The basic thesis of both works is that southern whites have systematically perpetuated ideas that seek obscure and diminish the truths of the experience of slavery.  I love Monuments, and I loved this book, but at the same time it is hard to ignore (as Smith does) the fact that he himself embraces and embodies an academic tradition synonymous with "cultural relativism." 

  Throughout How the Word is Passed Smith performs an interesting double move that saturates the entire book and indeed many of the novels I've read as part of the 1,001 Novels Project which can be best described this way:

1.  Until the Civil Rights movement there was only a limited critique of the Antebellum South AND contemporary conditions in the south.

2.  The Civil Rights movement forced the abandonment/revision of overt, legally sanctioned racisms by the Governments of the South.

3.  The emergence of cultural relativism in American universities allowed scholar to go back and properly diagnose the earlier period and create a comprehensive critique of the Antebellum South and its universe of horrors.

  However, this third point can hardly be said to have penetrated into the hearts and minds of everyday people living in the south, and the idea that Smith can waltz into these places, and act surprised that educated and non-educated Southerners have different ideas is frequently risible.  It's preaching to the converted, is what I'm saying.  But as one of the converted, I found it this book very illuminating.

Revisiting: The Conquest of the Last Maya Kingdom

 Revisiting:  The Conquest of the Last Maya Kingdom

     I like this post because at some point I added on two paragraphs from a lost review of The World of the Huns by Otto Maenchen-Helfen.   Reviewing and editing the larger post, Collected Writing on World History:  2007-2011, it was impossible to ignore the number of books related to Meso-America, Mayans and Aztecs and others as well.  Also, ancient Iran.  Related to the imminent collapse of my marriage? Perhaps. 

Published 10/9/11
The Conquest of the Last Maya Kingdom
by Grant D. Jones
p. 1998
Stanford University Press

    I just finished reading another book by this author on the Maya. Specifically, Maya Resistance to Spanish Rule: Time and History on a Colonial Frontier. That book ends where this one picks up, i.e. the conquest of the last Maya Kingdom at the end of the 17th century. It's what I would call a Werner Herzogian story, replete with forced labor, needless death, insane ambition and pointless conquest. In fact, I'm a little surprised that Herzog never made a movie about this story, but that might be explained by the fact that the first book written on the subject since the conquest itself WAS PUBLISHED IN 1998. How's that for forgotten history?
    The last Mayan Kingdom was located around the area of Lake Peten Itza. At the time of initial European contact, the Mayans lived in a bunch of related Kingdoms on the Yucatan peninsula. The main Kingdom at the time of the original contact was known as Chichen Itza, the present day Mexican city of Merida, but basically there were several Kingdoms extending through much of southern Mexico, Guatemala and Belize. Some of these Kingdoms had been strongly influenced by the Mexica/Aztec vibe, others were more traditionally Mayan.
    When the Spanish arrived, they immediately instituted their system of forced labor- resembling European feudalism. Quite sensibly, this spurred migration by the Mayans from the North to the South. Allegedly the rulers of the last Mayan Kingdom had themselves emigrated from the North within the last century, but they co-existed with local Mayan speakers who had never left.
    This complicated territorial dynamic between the newcomers, and the never-lefts was something that the Spaniards never really understood, and since this is the first book length treatment of this subject EVER, it's fair to say that until Jones spoke up, no one else understood it either.
    The last Mayan Kingdom was ruled in complex fashion. There were five sets of paired kings/high priests, four of which ruled for the communities living to the north/south/east/west of the capital. The last pair ruled the capital itself. It's quite clear from Jones' source material that the time immediately preceding and succeeding the Spanish conquest of the last Mayan Kingdom was a time of civil war among the Maya- and that this civil war prevented the Maya from implementing a coherent strategy of resistance.
    Various factions among the Maya advocated radically different strategies. The main/central King was what you would call an accommodationist- to the point where he sent a nephew of his north- in secret- to be converted to Christianity and pledge loyalty to the Spanish King. A couple years later this created an awkward scene when the Spaniards showed up and gave him European style clothes symbolizing the submission of the entire Kingdom to the Spanish.
    As you could imagine, this created conflict among the other four Kings- none of whom were aware of what the central King had done. Thus, after this point- which is still a year or two before the conquest, the "main" Mayan King basically lost all authority over his own people and created a climate where conflict between Mayans who wanted to resist and those who wanted to accommodate.
    There were several skirmishes before the final invasion- skirmishes marked by Spanish missionaries and the odd soldier being attacked and having their heart ripped out. When the Spanish finally did conquer the capital- an island city in lake Peten Itza- it was a fucking disaster marked by famine and plague. At the same time, there was a lengthy period of civil war among the Itza themselves- specifically between those who helped the Spanish survive and those who wanted the Spanish to leave.
    In the end, the area wouldn't recover until outside immigration picked up in the 1950s. The invasion itself happened in 1699- so we're talking about three and half centuries of recovery time. As I said- it's a Herzogian story. Someone ought to make a movie. What's Mel Gibson doing?
    Attila and his Horde didn't much persist after the death of the man himself. Part of the problem is that the Hunnic hordes, being poly-ethnic, didn't have a "nation state" mentality- more like a "we are only going to stick around until we can get the hell out of here." Thus, after Attila's death, the Goths- serving as his lieutenants, rebelled against his successors and started their own statelets. Also, Germanic speaking peoples were pushed into Europe from the Russian plains in an attempt to flee the Huns.
    Prior to the hey day of Attila, the Huns were often paired with the Alans- an Iranian language speaking people from the Northern Caucuses. However, after 400 AD the Alans split with the Huns and settled in Southern France and the Balkans, where they were a potential source of Zoarastrian/Cathar ideas in Europe.
    As to the ethnic/racial/linguistic characteristics of the Huns, Maenchen-Helfen, comes down on the side of the Huns being poly-racial- being a mix of "Mongoloid" and "Europoid" peoples, but speaking a Turkic language. SO NOW YOU KNOW

Revisiting: GREETINGS FROM PERU!

 Revisiting: GREETINGS FROM PERU!

   Another great post from close to 15 years ago. Really felt like anything was possible back then. This is about as adventurous as I've got over the years.  Going to New England twice a year for the past decade plus has really put the kibosh on trips that aren't a few hours distant from there. 

Published 1/3/11
GREETINGS FROM PERU 



IT IS COLD AND RAINY BUT BEAUTIFUL.

The Incan Cross (1/10/11)


    You can't let relativism interfere with the basic capacity to compare one group of people to another. The categories you pick and ways you talk about those categories influence the value of your observations. For example, it's easy to talk about the ways people are different but such observations are likely to place groups of people in different status positions. Religious differences, social classes, economic disparity.
    Cultural comparison was very much on my mind during my recent trip to Peru. As a geographic place, the tourist region around the city of Cusco is a rich cultural environment. The history of multiple levels of cultural conflict plays out on a physically remarkable environment. While you're there it's perfectly appropriate to consider the history of the place.
    The larger area of Peru and Ecuador was a culturally rich place in the Pre-Columbian era. Advanced civilizations were making anthropomorphic pottery and sophisticated human featured sculpture before Christ was born. The Incans were heirs to this broad, long running tradition in much the same way the Romans were heirs to the Greek/Mediterranean civilization.
    The larger Peruvian civilization was handicapped because of a lack of writing. History mostly requires the presence of written language BEFORE events can be considered history. Thus, for civilizations without written language, you are looking at physical remains. Thus, the Incans are at the very cusp, with no written language tradition but physical remains that are top of the table. Most compelling for me is the symbol of the Incan Cross, pictured above at the Sun Temple in Pisaq. Wikipedia calls it the Chakana:
    The Chakana (or Inca Cross, Chakana) symbolizes for Inca mythology what is known in other mythologies as the World Tree, Tree of Life and so on. The stepped cross is made up of an equal-armed cross indicating the cardinal points of the compass and a superimposed square. The square represents the other two levels of existence. The three levels of existence are Hana Pacha(the upper world inhabited by the superior gods), Kay Pacha, (the world of our everyday existence) and Ucu or Urin Pacha (the underworld inhabited by spirits of the dead, the ancestors, their overlords and various deities having close contact to the Earth plane). The hole through the centre of the cross is the Axis by means of which the shaman transits the cosmic vault to the other levels. It also represents Cuzco, the center of the Incan empire, and the Southern Cross constellation. (WIKIPEDIA) Pretty sophisticated concept, no writing required to explain it necessary. You come across that in a ruin at 10,000 feet up and you get it.

Revisiting: Mesopotamia: Reason, Writing and the Gods by Jean Bottero

 Revisiting:

 Mesopotamia: Reason, Writing and the Gods 

by Jean Bottero

Published 9/17/09

   I used to get into some heavy duty topics!  Book Reviews like this one remind me that there was a whole thing I did where I read through a bibliography of books about the history of the Middle Ages, but before I had a blog, let alone a blog focused on books.  I think ancient history, and ancient pre-history is such an interesting subject.  I believe that you can look at linguistics as a kind of proxy for history- that's a theme I've pursued here via writings about the Indo-Europeans. 

Sumerian/Akkadian figures

Books Discussed

History Begins at Sumer by Samuel Kramer
Mesopotamia: Reason, Writing and the Gods by Jean Bottero,
translated by Zainab Banhrani and Marc Van De Mieroop

       I think in terms of cheap hipster points, ancient Mesopotamia is under-developed. Who occupies the field? A couple of death metal bands and the Vice documentary film about contemporary heavy-metal Iraqi guys? It's fertile ground, simply because a) there is a lot of it b) it's really strange c) no one has heard of it. Meme gold.
       However, there are potholes on the road to wisdom, and History Begins at Sumer, previously reviewed here, is one of them. What a boring book! I found it excruciating. History Begins at Sumer is the academic equivalent of a decades old Readers Digest: Dumbing it Down American Style. History Begins at Sumer is dated and not worth reading.
        On the other hand, Bottero's Mesopotamia, published in 1995 by the University of Chicago, is literally a breath of fresh air, and is clearly aware of History Begins at Sumer's popularity, and basically mocks it, which is awesome, because he's right. Even though it is translated from the French, the simplicity and clarity of Bottero's argument is more akin to the Annalist movement of French history then the stinking wasteland of French cultural theory/philosophy.
     Which all goes to say: READ BOTTERO'S BOOK AND NOT HISTORY BEGINS AT SUMER!!!

Unworthy Republic (2020) by Claudio Saunt

Audiobook Review

Unworthy Republic: 

The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory (2020)

by Claudio Saunt

        Unworthy Republic is a 2020 Bancroft Prize (US history) winner about the removal of Native American tribes from the Eastern half of the United States.   It is a sad, sordid history, not simply limited to the more-or-less well known "Trail of Tears" but including similar removals from the old Northwest (today's Ohio/Wisconsin/Michigan) and Florida.  

        In law school I learned about the legal back and forth- tribes desperately seeking relief from the Congress and the United States Supreme Court over a period of decades with limited/no success.  I know about the result- the presence of dozens of tribes in the eastern half of Oklahoma who had no historical ties to the area.  What I learned from this book were the voices of those involved- the leaders of civilized tribes who thought the Federal government would protect them.  The bureaucrats and adventurers who were tasked with implementing the removal.  The state authorities in places like Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina and Florida, who come off the worst of the bunch and the voices of Americans from outside the South and old Northwest, who often stood in opposition to these policies.

    What strikes me most about the events in Unworthy Republic is the blood-thirstyness of the local population in places like Georgia, where fear mongering and simple greed let to the greatest atrocities- a clear-cut case of ethnic cleansing if not genocide.  It's also hard not to link the events of Unworthy Republic with the large trends in American democracy during the same period, namely the rise of Andrew Jackson and enfranchisement of non-property holding Americans, making the dispossession of Native groups an attractive prospect for poor white Americans.

The Return (2016) by Hisham Matar

 100 Best Books of the 21st Century: New York Times

The Return (2016)

by Hisham Matar

#89

  Exploring the non-fiction selections on the New York Times recent 100 Best Books of the 21st Century has been a real pleasure and a good break from fiction.  The fiction portion, on the other hand, fills me with a vague dread mostly because the titles I haven't read on that part of the list represent conscious decisions rather than a lack of familiarity.   It's almost all domestic fiction and there is just only so much of that I can take in a given time period, which is currently filled by the prevalence of the same genre on the 1,001 Novels: A Library fo America list.   It took me awhile to make it to The Return, the non-fiction work by novelist Matar about his decades long quest to obtain closure regarding the whereabouts of his Dad, who was kidnapped out of Egypt by the Quaddaffi regime and held for years at a nightmarish Libyan prison.

  This is the only non-fiction title on the 100 Best Books List to not have an Audiobook edition available via the library app so I read the hard copy on my Kindle.   The Return is both a coming-of-age book about the author, a family biography and a history for a place- Libya- that is poorly documented.  For example, this book was the first I'd heard of the Italo-Turkic war between the Italians and the Ottoman Turks before World War I.  It's important to Libya because it marks the beginning of the Italian colonial period.   Matar keeps the book moving along- 272 pages is sufficient to tell a story that could have been at least three separate books.  Not surprising that it was a Pulitzer Prize winner after it was released.

Seaweed Chronicles (2018) by Susan Hand Shetterly

 Book Review

Seaweed Chronicles (2018)

by Susan Hand Shetterly

  I bought this book at an independent bookstore in Castine, Maine, several years back on vacation and read it this year, also on vacation.  Seaweed Chronicles is a great example of what I call "New Yorker lit" or books that seem like a New Yorker feature extended to book length.  Here, the subject is seaweed, its uses and (potential) abuses, written from a variety of perspectives of people who live on the coast of Maine.   It starts out from the perspective one might expect: efforts by locals and multi-national corporations to harvest what might seem like a limitless resource.  Seaweed is a valuable commodity, though not a monolithic one, as I learned from Seaweed Chronicles there are several different types of seaweed, depending on where you are.